• Designer David E. Whitcher has posted dates for Protospiel 2012, which will take place July 6-8 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. For those not familiar with the event, a short description from the website: "Started in 2001 by game designers Stephen Glenn, Dominic Crapuchettes, and Mike Petty, Protospiel is an annual get-together of amateur and established game designers to test and promote nearly-finished game prototypes. The atmosphere is casual, yet everyone is serious about their goals and dreams of publishing games." Publishers scheduled to attend the event include Mayfair Games, Academy Games, ElfinWerks and Minion Games.

• Anyone who wants to reenact the Bobby Fischer / Boris Spassky chess match that took place in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1972 had better have a few hundred thousand dollars/Euros lying around if he wants to make the match as authentic as possible. In the year of the event's fortieth anniversary, Danish auction house Bruun Rasmussen is auctioning a chessboard signed by both players, along with chess pieces, a table, and a clock used for some of the 1972 showdown.

• "Humor" site Cracked.com features "The 9 Most Insane Board Games of All Time". Far be it from me to judge whether a board game is sane or not, but shouldn't it first be judged conscious?

• Not to start the "Are games art?" argument once again, but – oh, why not, take a look at the following short film by Andrew Thomas Huang – which was a Kickstarter project, by the way – and try to imagine what the ludic equivalent of it might be:

I can imagine stories and artwork that have a similar "feel" to this video (which already includes dance), but I'm stumbling on a game that embodies the same spirit. Is there such a thing, and if not, why not? (HT: Craig Maher)